Expressing no remorse over the policy of surrendering senior DMG officers to Islamabad, the Punjab government is bent upon bringing in the mainstream PCS officers, clearing hurdles in their promotions to higher grades immediately after Eidul Fitr.
The major hurdle is considered to be the training mandatory for their promotion. And the department responsible for the training has been asked to accept all those being identified for the purpose.
The policy appears to be a windfall for the PCS officers who have been denied promotions to higher grades, and key postings as a result, for the past so many years, vindicating their point of view that DMG officers are the main hurdle in the advancement of their career.
The government is now regularly holding promotion boards, also giving double promotions to a few lucky officers in one week. The beneficiaries were given BS-19 a week after their promotion to BS-18. Their length of service and delay in promotions because of litigation among themselves is the justification.
The shift in policy is nevertheless irking the DMG officers in Punjab who say that those who do not want to listen to the reason are damaging their service. “They are intolerant to dissent. We are trained to apply our mind independently which some of our own seniors are not ready to tolerate. That’s why they are kicking us out to replace us with a team having no choice but to obey and stay,” a mid-career DMG officer says.
According to official sources, the government is sending 40 BS-18 officials to the Management and Professional Development Department for two-month training immediately after Eid to fulfill a requirement for their promotion to the next grade.
The department has also been asked to accommodate as many officials for training as it can so that all of them could be promoted to the next grades and posted against senior positions.
Official sources said a lot many eligible PCS officers had already been promoted to higher grades. The remaining ones were those who could not or did not go for the mandatory training necessary for promotion, they added.
“Many (PCS officers) did not want training so that they could keep on clinging to their existing posts. Others could not go for it because of lack of arrangements. We are now removing all such hurdles to promote all to the higher grades,” an official source said.
The sources said during the past two months 35 PCS officers had been promoted from BS-17 to18, 44 from BS-18 to 19, 14 from BS-19 to 20 and one from Bs-20 to 21.
The official sources said the government was just going to promote and post PCS officers as per their quota, and there was no ill will against DMG officers was involved. (Interestingly, this has been a long standing demand of the PCS officers which was not met despite struggle in and outside courts.) The PCS officers have 35 per cent share of seats in BS21, 40 per cent in BS-20, 50 per cent in BS-19, 60 per cent in BS-18 and 70 per cent in BS-17.
The sources said the PCS officers could not be promoted against the quota reserved for DMG officers. But, promoting them against the seats of their own quota would still benefit a lot of them (and the government), they added.
Meanwhile, the provincial government is surrendering its former blue-eyed boy Fawad Hasan Fawad to the federal government. Mr Fawad went on a leave while working as Communication and Works secretary. His leave had expired on September 4 but he had not reported back to the Services Department as yet.
Source: Dawn